Week 58 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   This has been an interesting week. One of the best things that happened was that in our meeting with Andy (The Taxi driver) we extended a baptismal date and he said yes! With no hesitation! It was awesome!!! We are super excited for him.

   We had our quarterly interviews with President Lam this week. That was great. We had a good long chat about the work and we went way over time haha. He both cried and laughed so that was good. After that I kept remembering the stories I have been told by other missionaries about how in some missions the mission president will go on 24 hour exchanges with the missionaries. I think that would be really funny. 

   This Sunday we also had the assignment to teach the gospel principals class. So in order to prepare for that we had to go and buy 11 nails and a small block of wood. This proved a most difficult task. We had to go to 6 metal shops (like a hardware store but much more grungy) none of them had any nails except for the last one which had them way, way in the back. Then the block of wood was pretty easy. We just walked up to a construction site and asked for a scrap of wood. It had huge nails sticking out of it so we had to get rid of those. I will attach a picture of the completed thing so this will make more sense. The class went quite well and everyone was very impressed. So that was nice.

   Yesterday we went back to the church very late in the evening to teach a lesson. However, the person who we were going to meet did not show up. However, Yoshi was there, and out of his bag he puled a Chinese Chess set and said "I know you know how to play" and then disappeared to wash his hands. The best part is that it is Thomas the Tank Engine themed. So that was supper awesome! Yoshi, I know you are reading this, so Thank you!

   Lets see what else, one of our investigators called me last night in tears and said that she was going to kill her self. She was quite drunk as well. So I spent a half hour on the phone trying to talk her out of it... And I did so that was good. yeah, good experience.

   Then our water heater came back! I don't remember if I said or not but we have not had a water heater for about 10 days and there has just been large wires sticking out of the wall in the shower. But the man came and put it back in so that was great!!! He also told us what was wrong with it... it is in the shower and it is NOT WATER PROOF!!! So that was really dumb of the land lord. Good thing he came and paid for it though. So now we have to be careful with the not water proof water heater. 

   So yeah good week this week. 

Love,

Elder Walker 

1. this is a pretty place in our area.

2-3. the nails and block of wood object lesson on obedience.

the nails and block of wood object lesson on obedience

this is a pretty place in our area

Lifts and Piñatas. Week 57 from Hong Kong

Hello All!

First of all HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENSEN!!!!!  I am writing this on the 19th and you are reading it on the 18th haha cool. Happy Birthday and have a good one bro! 

   Ok so bad news is that I had most of this e-mail written and then it all disappeared so I will have to be bad so sorry.

   We were going to attempt a 3 day diet of only fruit and rice. We realized that it was expensive and we were all very hungry by the end of the first day so we decided to stop. We also learned that dragon fruit seeds do not digest. 

   This week we did a lot of "Less Active finding". Which means we go to the houses of people who have not been to church in a long time and just check up on them. This led to us going in to a few very sketchy buildings with very very sketch lifts. I got videos of a few so I will attach some of those. For the most scary one I only got a video of the door because it had a man inside and I didn't want to make fun of his house. 

   Then we had a great activity which really helped us find some people to teach. So that was amazing. It was also a great party so those are always great! Our roommates made a Piñata. That was really fun because the Chinese people have never seen one before so they were asking a lot of questions. They didn't quite understand why we did it. One asked me if it symbolizes raining blessings on people. I said "yeah... kinda like that..." haha. At this activity I also learned how to play Chinese chess. Turns out it is vaguely similar to our white people version. I was playing one of the Priests (16-18 year old young man) and trying to figure out how it worked when a member came up from behind me and started playing for me. He won of course, but it looked like I won and it blew everyone's mind that a White dude could beat a Chinese person at Chinese chess. So that was really funny.

   I also want to talk about an awesome investigator we have named Andy. So Andy drives a taxi and the way that that works is that you own your car and the more you drive the more money you make. So He came to all 3 hours of church!!! He lost a fair amount of money so it was a pretty big sacrifice for him. So that was amazing! I am fairly sure that he will be baptized fairly soon. 

 Ok that is all for this week Love you all!

Love,

Elder Walker

Sketchy elevator

Water heater troubles

Address of the building Gordon Lives in.  Its fun to "walk" the streets in Google Maps!

Piñata

Our water heater broke again. So that makes about a month total for me with no hot water at all...

the moon on the night of the mid autumn festival. (By the way avoid moon cakes. the ice cream ones are good but the rest are quite... interesting)

This was a funny name of a lift. it is very similar to a movie title...

Still Alive. Week 56 from Hong Kong

Hello all! 

   Well I guess school started because my in box is supper empty haha. It is just as well Nothing really happened this week. 

   This Tuesday I got a visit from Sister Yong (Now whatever her first name is). She and I served together in Sha Tin when she finished her mission. She came back to Hong Kong right before school started just to visit some people. It was pretty funny because she was supposed to buy me lunch. However she was running late so I had to buy her lunch. She paid me back and paid for half of my lunch so that was nice. It was just a short 20 min visit. It was good to remember and laugh about old times back when I was still a trainee. 

    The only other real thing that happened was we got to help a lady move. The Mandarin sisters were teaching her and decided that she would probably learn the gospel better in Cantonese. So we counted that as a turnover lesson. So that will be nice to have an investigator. The move was pretty hard because she lived in a room which was on the third floor and we were helping her move to a place on the fifth floor of another building. Both of which had no lift and we were moving things like a refrigerator, and all manner of cabinets. The stairs were narrow too. Only enough room for one in a row. (that was bad English I know) 

   Honestly other that that nothing really happened. It has been rainy so that is nice to go finding with no burning sun.

   That's really it. sorry for the boring one this week.

Love,

Elder Walker

The video is of the new apartment. Fun fact, the average apartment size for missionaries in HK is 800 square feet. That means there are some even smaller that that!!! ​

thisvideo is about the rain storm. The thunder was so loud it set off a car alarm! 

funny sign "ya don't see that in America"

couple neat rainy buildings

Tai Po week one. Week 55 from Hong Kong

Hello all!

   Well I am officially transferred to a  new area. It is called Tai Po and is just one area north of my last area. Packing was really difficult because I had lived in that apartment for 10 months so my stuff was everywhere. Though I was quite happy to leave the cockroaches behind. My new apartment is ok. It is smaller and less convenient than my last one which is lame but it is clean and not much smaller so that is nice. Also I ended up not white washing so that was a surprise. 

   The Sha Tin ward was pretty sad to hear that I was leaving. I called the bishop and a few of the members I was close to and they were all very sad. So it was nice to be missed. One of the ward members had heard that I had never had Dim Sum. So they were not going to let me leave without taking me out to that. It is a very popular type of Chinese food where you eat a lot of food and a lot of different kinds of food. There was nothing super strange that I was not used to. Except for the spicy cow stomach, that had a really weird texture and was supper chewy and I was just not really a fan. The pig skin and horse radish was ok though. I have a good picture I will attach. That was with Sister Au and the "Chan wei clan" (That is what we call the kids, they are pretty much all the youth in Sha Tin). That was a really good time. This from the kid who wouldn't even try his own birthday cake until he was 4 and survived on pop tarts and chicken nuggets!

   The day after moves we had Zone conference. It was a super good conference. I learned a lot from it. We talked a lot about sacrifice and repentance. 

   This last Sunday was fun because I started to be able to put some names to some faces. I was able to have some good conversations with the bishop and the first councilor. The benches in the Tai Po chapel are all wood. So it is not the most comfortable. I gave a little introduction from the pulpit so that was fun. Then The gospel principals class was interesting. So, Tai Po is where a lot of Mandarin work is centered. (I live with a pair of Mandarin elders now) Therefore in gospel principals since we didn't have any investigators we had the lesson in mandarin. That was hard. It was kinda a cool language thing though because the lesson and everyone was speaking mandarin, the bishop who was sitting next to me was talking to me in Cantonese, and I was reading the lesson manual in English. so that was good for a headache.

   That night we got invited to a dinner appointment at a sister Wong's house, with the bishop and his family. That was a lot of fun. The bishop wanted to see where I lived so he handed me his phone and told me to find it on google maps. So I did and they thought it was huge! and supper pretty. I was also able to show them the Car I learned to drive on in the drive way. They all said "next time we will go and eat at elder Walkers House!!!" I said that would be fine.

   Yeah, good times in Tai Po. 

   Love you all,

Elder Walker

This is the video from last week that we couldn't open.  Elder Daplin from the Philippines is roping him like a cow.   

this is Sister Au and the Chan Clan

the Sha Tin chapel

the Sha Tin chapel

famous Sha Tin bridge

cool paper lanterns. The mid autumn festival is coming up. So I am eating a lot of moon cakes